The Price of Civilization - an excerpt from Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

The Price of Civilization

Tasks to the Text

1.      Compare our world with New World. What is different in New World in comparison with our society? Make a list. (Try to compare things and phenomena on different levels)

2.      What are positive desirable consequences and what are negative undesirable consequences of the above changes? (Mention one or several things or phenomena about each change)

3.      What are possible causes of the above changes? Try to find several for each change.

4.      The differences above are mostly solutions to some problems New World employed. What were the problems they solved? Try to formulate them. (Be concrete)

The following passages may be of some help:

Shakespeare is prohibited in the New World.

“Because it’s old; that’s the chief reason. We haven’t any use for old things here.”

“Even when they’re beautiful?”

“Particularly when they’re beautiful. Beauty’s attractive, and we don’t want people to be attracted by old things. We want them to like the new ones.”

“All the same,”  he insisted obstinately, “Othello’s good, Othello’s better than those feelies.”

“Of course it is,” the Controller agreed. “But that’s the price we have to pay for stability. You’ve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We’ve sacrificed the high art.

“Stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.”

“The optimum population,” said Mustapha Mond, “is modelled on the iceberg–eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above.”

“And they’re happy below the water line?”

“Happier than above it. Happier than your friend here, for example.“ He pointed.

“In spite of that awful work?”

“Awful? They don’t find it so.

‘Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can’t. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered.’

“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.”

“Civilization has absolutely no need of nobility or heroism. These things are symptoms of political inefficiency. In a properly organized society like ours, nobody has any opportunities for being noble or heroic. Conditions have got to be thoroughly unstable before the occasion can arise.”

5.      Can the problems above be divided into some smaller problems? Are they themselves parts of some larger problems? Try to formulate the complex of problems around each of the above problems.